I, Robot

‘We can’t go after Speedy ourselves, Mike – not on the Sunside. Even the new insosuits aren’t good for more than twenty minutes in direct sunlight. But you know the old saying, “Set a robot to catch a robot.” Look, Mike, maybe things aren’t so bad. We’ve got six robots down in the sublevels, that we may be able to use, if they work. If they work.’

There was a glint of sudden hope in Donovan’s eyes. ‘You mean six robots from the First Expedition. Are you sure? They may be subrobotic machines. Ten years is a long time as far as robot-types are concerned, you know.’

‘No, they’re robots. I’ve spent all day with them and I know. They’ve got positronic brains: primitive, of course.’ He placed the map in his pocket. ‘Let’s go down.’

The robots were on the lowest sublevel – all six of them surrounded by musty packing cases of uncertain content. They were large, extremely so, and even though they were in a sitting position on the floor, legs straddled out before them, their heads were a good seven feet in the air.

Donovan whistled. ‘Look at the size of them, will you? The chests must be ten feet around.’

‘That’s because they’re supplied with the old McGuffy gears. I’ve been over the insides – crummiest set you’ve ever seen.’

‘Have you powered them yet?’

‘No. There wasn’t any reason to. I don’t thing there’s anything wrong with them. Even the diaphragm is in reasonable order. They might talk.’

He had unscrewed the chest plate of the nearest as he spoke, inserted the two-inch sphere that contained the tiny spark of atomic energy that was a robot’s life. There was difficulty in fitting it, but he managed, and then screwed the plate back on again in laborious fashion. The radio controls of more modern models had not been heard of ten years earlier. And then to the other five.

Donovan said uneasily, ‘They haven’t moved.’

‘No orders to do so,’ replied Powell, succinctly. He went back to the first in the line and struck him on the chest. ‘You! Do you hear me?’

The monster’s head bent slowly and the eyes fixed themselves on Powell. Then, in a harsh, squawking voice – like that of a medieval phonograph, he grated, ‘Yes, Master!’

Powell grinned humorlessly at Donovan. ‘Did you get that? Those were the days of the first talking robots when it looked as if the use of robots on Earth would be banned. The makers were fighting that and they built good, healthy slave complexes into the damned machines.’

‘It didn’t help them,’ muttered Donovan.

‘No, it didn’t, but they sure tried.’ He turned once more to the robot. ‘Get up!’

The robot towered upward slowly and Donovan’s head craned and his puckered lips whistled.

Powell said: ‘Can you go out upon the surface? In the light?’

There was consideration while the robot’s slow brain worked. Then, ‘Yes, Master.’

‘Good. Do you know what a mile is?’

Another consideration, and another slow answer. ‘Yes, Master.’

‘We will take you up to the surface then, and indicate a direction. You will go about seventeen miles, and somewhere in that general region you will meet another robot, smaller than yourself. You understand so far?’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘You will find this robot and order him to return. If he does not wish to, you are to bring him back by force.’

Donovan clutched at Powell’s sleeve. ‘Why not send him for the selenium direct?’

‘Because I want Speedy back, nitwit. I want to find out what’s wrong with him.’ And to the robot, ‘All right, you, follow me.’

The robot remained motionless and his voice rumbled: ‘Pardon, Master, but I cannot. You must mount first.’ His clumsy arms had come together with a thwack, blunt fingers interlacing.

Powell stared and then pinched at his mustache. ‘Uh … oh!’

Donovan’s eyes bulged. ‘We’ve got to ride him? Like a horse?’

‘I guess that’s the idea. I don’t know why, though. I can’t see – yes, I do. I told you they were playing up robot-safety in those days. Evidently, they were going to sell the notion of safety by not allowing them to move about without a mahout on their shoulders all the time. What do we do now?’

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking,’ muttered Donovan. ‘We can’t go out on the surface, with a robot or without. Oh, for the love of Pete’ – and he snapped his fingers twice. He grew excited. ‘Give me that map you’ve got. I haven’t studied it for two hours for nothing. This is a Mining Station. What’s wrong with using the tunnels?’

The Mining Station was a black circle on the map, and the light dotted lines that were tunnels stretched out about it in spiderweb fashion.

Donovan studied the list of symbols at the bottom of the map. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the small black dots are openings to the surface, and here’s one maybe three miles away from the selenium pool. There’s a number here – you’d think they’d write larger – 13a. If the robots know their way around here—’

Powell shot the question and received the dull ‘Yes, Master,’ in reply. ‘Get your insosuit,’ he said with satisfaction.

It was the first time either had worn the insosuits – which marked one time more than either had expected to upon their arrival the day before – and they tested their limb movements uncomfortably.

The insosuit was far bulkier and far uglier than the regulation spacesuit; but withal considerably lighter, due to the fact that they were entirely nonmetallic in composition. Composed of heat-resistant plastic and chemically treated cork layers, and equipped with a desiccating unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury’s sun for twenty minutes. Five to ten minutes more, as well, without actually killing the occupant.

And still the robot’s hands formed the stirrup, nor did he betray the slightest atom of surprise at the grotesque figure into which Powell had been converted.

Powell’s radio-harshened voice boomed out: ‘Are you ready to take us to Exit 13a?’

‘Yes, Master.’

Good, thought Powell; they might lack radio control but at least they were fitted for radio reception. ‘Mount one or the other, Mike,’ he said to Donovan.

He placed a foot in the improvised stirrup and swung upward. He found the seat comfortable; there was the humped back of the robot, evidently shaped for the purpose, a shallow groove along each shoulder for the thighs and two elongated ‘ears’ whose purpose now seemed obvious.

Powell seized the ears and twisted the head. His mount turned ponderously. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’ But he did not feel at all light-hearted.

The gigantic robots moved slowly, with mechanical precision, through the doorway that cleared their heads by a scant foot, so that the two men had to duck hurriedly, along a narrow corridor in which their unhurried footsteps boomed monotonously and into the air lock.

The long, airless tunnel that stretched to a pinpoint before them brought home forcefully to Powell the exact magnitude of the task accomplished by the First Expedition, with their crude robots and their start-from-scratch necessities. They might have been a failure, but their failure was a good deal better than the usual run of the System’s successes.

The robots plodded onward with a pace that never varied and with footsteps that never lengthened.

Powell said: ‘Notice that these tunnels are blazing with lights and that the temperature is Earth-normal. It’s probably been like this all the ten years that this place has remained empty.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Cheap energy; cheapest in the System. Sunpower, you know and on Mercury’s Sunside, sunpower is something. That’s why the Station was built in the sunlight rather than in the shadow of a mountain. It’s really a huge energy converter. The heat is turned into electricity, light, mechanical work and what have you; so that energy is supplied and the Station is cooled in a simultaneous process.’

‘Look,’ said Donovan. ‘This is all very educational, but would you mind changing the subject? It so happens that this conversion of energy that you talk about is carried on by the photo-cell banks mainly – and that is a tender subject with me at the moment.’

Powell grunted vaguely, and when Donovan broke the resulting silence, it was to change the subject completely. ‘Listen, Greg. What the devil’s wrong with Speedy, anyway? I can’t understand it.’

It’s not easy to shrug shoulders in an insosuit, but Powell tried it. ‘I don’t know, Mike. You know he’s perfectly adapted to a Mercurian environment. Heat doesn’t mean anything to him and he’s built for the light gravity and the broken ground. He’s foolproof – or, at least, he should be.’